Ho Chi Minh City police on Wednesday said they had taken into custody a Chinese man for his alleged involvement in a phone scam ring that cheated many people out of billions of dong, local media reported.

Xue Wen, 35, was arrested in Hanoi and then transferred to HCMC for further investigation, according to the police.

The police said the man admitted his involvement in the ring led by a Taiwanese man named Liu Wei Chun, 34, and his Vietnamese wife Duong Thi Nguyet, 33.

The couple and three other Vietnamese gang members, aged 30-36, were arrested last month.

The suspects admitted to several phone scams over the past year, swindling a large amount of money from different victims. It is not immediately clear how many have fallen for the scams.

Police said the gang often pretended to be police officers on the phone and asked their victims to transfer money into their accounts for investigation.

In a recent case on November 17, they called a woman in HCMC, accusing her of involving in a major drug smuggling case and asking her to transfer more than VND400 million, or nearly US$18,000, for investigation.

Thinking that she would receive her money back after she was cleared of the accusation, the woman sent the money.

Later she became suspicious and reported the case to the police.

Subsequent investigation led to the arrests of the five suspects, who had withdrawn VND250 million before police froze their bank accounts.

Several other gangs, using the similar tricks to cheat victims around Vietnam, have been busted since late last year, police said.